Hebrews Lesson 69
NKJ
Matthew
We started off in Hebrews 6:7-8 with an illustration that is really a
warning that relates to Hebrews 6:4-6 dealing with the dangers of falling away
as a believer and beginning to turn from a passion for studying the Word,
knowing the Word, and applying the Word.
Hebrews 6:7 gives the illustration.
NKJ
Hebrews 6:7 For the
earth which drinks in the rain that often comes upon it, and bears herbs useful
for those by whom it is cultivated, receives blessing from God;
NKJ Hebrews 6:8 but
if it bears thorns and briars, it is rejected and near to being cursed,
whose end is to be burned.
We have gone through the details here. What I’ve done the last three or
four weeks is take the concepts that we find in this verse which has to do with
production – how the fruit is produced from the soil as by-product of the
nutrients that go into it through the soil itself and the rain. You have two kinds of production that come
out of the Christian life – that which is positive (which receives blessing)
and that which is negative (which judged or disciplined.)
I started a study in which I was answering the question, how do we
grow? How do we produce fruit? What is fruit? One of the points that I made as we got into
John 15:7 which is where Jesus uses the vine (the grape vine) as an analogy of
spiritual growth is to emphasize the fact that fruit (when we look at how fruit
is defined fruit in the New Testament) is not evangelism. It is not defined in terms of Christian
service. Fruit is not defined in terms
of giving. It is not defined in terms of
how many people you witnessed to this week.
It is not defined in those categories because those categories have to
do with Christian service or our responsibilities in either our priesthood or
our ambassadorship. So we have these
priorities, these responsibilities that are ours because of who and what we are
in Jesus Christ at the instant we become priests to God and royal
ambassadors. Now at that stage when you
are a baby priest or baby ambassador, there is not a whole lot you can do in
terms of working out those responsibilities.
You have to learn and you have to grow.
You have to learn what is involved in growth. You have to grow to become mature before you
can effectively function in those areas.
I want to make sure that you understand that I inserted the adverb there
– effectively function or fully function in those areas. We can all begin to function in different
areas of our priesthood and ambassadorship when we are young believers, but as
you grow and mature then what happens is that you become more effective in your
service in those areas of priesthood and ambassadorship.
Some people get the idea that “I am going to wait until I am more mature
before I start serving.”
No, that is not how it works. You
start serving as you grow, but in different areas related to your particular
spiritual age. That has to do with
service. Fruit on the other hand has to
do with character. Character is related
to the integrity of the Lord Jesus Christ.
The character that is being produced in us is the character of the Lord
Jesus Christ. We have seen this in a
couple of passages that we have looked at.
So we went from Hebrews 6. The
first area to illustrate by comparing Scripture with Scripture was the vine
analogy in John 15. A conclusion that we
came to in John 15 was that in Jesus’ terminology “abiding in Him” was the sole
and necessary requirement to produce fruit.
If you are not abiding in Christ, you are not producing fruit. You have to abide in Christ to produce fruit. So believers are either abiding in Christ or
they are not abiding in Christ. When you
are abiding in Christ there is first growth that takes place and then there is
fruit production. You have these
different stages of growth. You see that
in these agricultural analogies that are used over and over again throughout
Scripture. Psalm 1 is another
one. We touched on that on Tuesday
night. You have them in Matthew 13, Luke
8. We went to those passages and we saw
that there are different degrees of growth in different believers. Some have just a little more growth. They are just a seed that falls on the rocky
soil. It germinates. It sprouts.
It puts forth a little bit of growth and that is it. Then there are those with a little bit more
growth. They fall on the thorny
soil. There is more growth and then it
gets choked out. Then finally there is
the plant that grows to fruit production maturity. Even that produces different levels some
produce 100 fold, some 50 fold, and some 20 fold. There are different levels. So everybody is
different. So we have gone through those
passages already.
At the end of our study last time I started looking at the
mechanics. How is this fruit
produced? What is our
responsibility? What is God’s
responsibility? Both are involved in
this. We have certain responsibilities
where our volition is engaged. The Holy
Spirit who is the primary agent in sanctification is also engaged. So where do we see these things
separate? How do they fit together? So we begin to look at some passages in
Ephesians 5 where it ends with a verse that is familiar to many of us.
NKJ Ephesians
I connected this verse with Colossians 3:16. Now just as a point of background. I am not sure if I covered this last
time. Paul was in prison (under house
arrest) in
NKJ
Colossians
So what we have with this series of participles after the command “to
let the Word of Christ dwell”, these participles indicate the results of the
indwelling of the Word in the mentality of the soul as it has its impact on the
way you live. Notice one of the first
consequences mentioned in both passages is admonishing or speaking.
Ephesians says, “Speaking to one another in psalms, in hymns, and
spiritual songs. Singing is a part of
the spiritual life. Singing praises to
God is part of the spiritual life. In
too many churches singing is like something that we kind of tack on Sunday
morning.
“Let’s get through that and get to the real stuff (which is the
teaching).”
I have heard people say that.
“Why do we even sing?”
It is part of what the Scripture says.
It is vital. On the other hand
you have people who think that it is the Word of God - the teaching that has
become peripheral. Real praise and
worship is the singing. Let’s go do that
for 45 minutes and tack on a little sermonette at the end. That is much worse because it is the Word of
God that is powerful.
“It is the Word of God,” Jesus said, “that is the instrument of
sanctification in the life of the believer.”
If you don’t learn to think like God thinks, if you don’t learn to
understand what God has written to you as an individual; then how are you even
going to live the Christian life or learn to think. It’s less of a problem to reduce the singing
and more of a problem to emphasize it.
But singing is not some sort of appendix that you stick on the beginning
of a Sunday morning worship service because that is the way things have been
done.
Okay, let’s look at a little chart that I put together.
You have two different commands put two different places, but the
consequences that you read in the following verses are the same. For example both Ephesians and Colossians
have the result of teaching and admonishing one another or teaching one another
with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs.
That is in Colossians 3:16b and Ephesians
Second there is an emphasis on gratitude in both passages – to be
thankful for all things. In Eph
NKJ
Ephesians
So there is gratitude that characterizes the believer. That is part of grace orientation. We are grateful for what God gave us. The words grace and gratitude are related to
one another. They both come from the
same roots in Latin. The English words
do. There is a relationship. If you understand grace, it produces
gratitude. If you don’t understand
grace, it doesn’t produce gratitude.
Third, it affects relationships.
Ephesians
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Ephesians
The fear of God governs everything.
We talked about that Tuesday night – the importance of the fear of the
Lord is the beginning of wisdom. It is
more than just respect for God.
I can liken it to when I would disobey my mother. Some of you knew my mother. I would disobey my mother when I was a little
boy.
She would say, “This is pretty serious.
Your father is going to deal with this when he comes home.”
Then I just went to my room and
decided that my life was probably going to end that day. That is comparable to the fear of the
Lord. There is a recognition of and
respect for that authority. Also there
is a certain dread or terror that is hanging there because one realizes the
principle of ultimate accountability.
God can lower the boom. That is
part of this idea of fear of the Lord.
So there is an overriding command of submitting to one another in fear
of the Lord because that is related to the whole principle of love in the
Christian life.
But then Paul begins to demonstrate how that affects different
relationships. First of all, wives are
to be submissive to their husbands. That
is Colossians 3:18 and Ephesians 5:22.
I pointed out on Tuesday night (We got into this coming from a different
direction,) that the command for wives to submit to their husbands is the Greek
verb hupotasso and the other words that are
used in this context for obedience. Even
in English translations they use different words. You have wives submit to your husbands, but
children are to obey their parents and slaves are to obey their masters. There is a difference there. Wives are to be
submissive – hupotasso. Children and employees
are to be obedient – hupachuo. There is a difference.
Husbands, your wife is not to be obedient to you like a child or like an
employee. She is a partner in the divine
team that is going forth to fulfill the responsibilities that God has given a
marriage. There is one leader and one
follower. But the leader and follower
relationship is not the relationship of a drill sergeant to an inductee. It is the relation of two people who are
going somewhere.
Years ago I developed the doctrine of dance to describe this because it
is like dancing. I don’t have time to go
through that. Year ago I took dance
lessons. I learned a lot of
principles. It was in a class setting
where you would switch partners all the time.
I was in a class where everybody got to know each other we would go out
afterwards to some of the country and western places. We would dance frequently and everybody would
switch partners.
Some of the ladies would tell me, “You are really a good dancer, but I
don’t like to dance with this guy or that guy because either this guy leads too
strongly and he is going to break something or this guy leads too weakly I am
not sure what he wants me to do and I am going to run into somebody.”
It is this leadership thing.
I would talk to some of the ladies and they would say, “I don’t like to
say anything to anybody because some of these men just can’t take it.”
What husbands have to learn sometimes is that the only one who can tell
how you are leading your wife is your wife.
She is the only one who can give you honest feedback on how you are
doing. The process in a young marriage is that you have to work out these details
of how the husband leads in relationship to the wife in following. You have to learn to reach that balance where
the husband’s leadership is not overpowering the wife, but on the other hand he
is not so weak that she is not sure where you are leading.
So wives are to be submissive to their husbands. Husbands are to be loving their wives as
Christ loves the church. There is that
qualification on both of them that is convicting. Wives are to be submissive to the husbands as
unto the Lord. This means ladies, your
relationship to your husband in terms of submission to his leadership is a
barometer of how well you are following the Lord.
Let’s move on to husbands now.
Husbands, how you love your wives indicates something about how you
understand what Jesus Christ did for you on the cross. There is a correlation there. Now that is probably enough for everybody to
chew on for awhile. That gets terribly
convicting after awhile because many of us have sin natures that get in the
way.
Fourth, children obey your parents.
Children are to be obedient to their parents.
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Colossians
NKJ
Ephesians 6:1 Children,
obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right.
The fathers are responsible for the spiritual welfare of the home. Fathers, you men are catching it
tonight. The fathers are
responsible. They are not responsible to
delegate that spiritual training to the wife.
Let me say that again. It goes right passed a lot of men.
This passage doesn’t say, “Fathers delegate the spiritual training in
the home to your wife.”
It is your responsibility. There
needs to be male leadership in spiritual things in the home. Otherwise you are going to end up producing
children like one child that was in my church some 25 years ago.
He said to his mother, “Well, I don’t want to go to church today. I realized that church is for women.”
His father never went to church.
It was his mother that always took him.
So you are setting an example. So
men have to be the ones who are teaching doctrine in the home to the kids. Don’t delegate that to your wives.
The corollary to that is that men should be the ones who are teaching
doctrine to the kids at church. In an
ideal situation we would not have women teaching any kids in prep school. From the youngest age up, we would have a man
in every classroom. A lot of times it
is good to have team teaching in there.
Kids respond well to a man. To
have men in there at the earliest stage says something about the fact that this
is important to men, especially to these young boys that need to have a good
male example.
Then the last thing that is listed in these passages is the relationship
between masters and slaves and that slaves are to be obedient to their
masters. Paul says in Ephesians 6:9…
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Ephesians 6:9 And you,
masters, do the same things to them, giving up threatening, knowing that your
own Master also is in heaven, and there is no partiality with Him.
So we have a model of Jesus Christ who is a pattern for most every one
of these relationships. Notice. All 7 of these consequences flow out of these
commands, but we have two different commands.
In Ephesians it is “be filled by means of the Spirit” and in Colossians
it is “let the Word of Christ dwell richly within you.” Then we can say that those two commands are
equivalent to one another. They are a
little different. One emphasizes the
role of the Spirit. The other emphasizes
the role of the Word of God. They work
in tandem. They work together. God uses both. It is not one without the other. People who teach that it is all the Spirit
end up being mystical or they end up being charismatic Pentecostal. They minimize the significance of the
revelation of God because they are always looking for some new revelation. Those who emphasize the knowledge of the Word
to the exclusion of the role of the Spirit end up always teaching some form of
formalism, some sort of theology(just a theological approach to the spiritual
life), or they end up with just morality
– just do it, do it, do it. They don’t
understand that the real dynamic, the real power in the Christian life is the
Holy Spirit. You can’t have one without
the other. They have to work
together.
NKJ Ephesians
Both of these words “do not be drunk” and “be filled with” are present
passive imperatives. Now a present imperative
simply means that this is supposed to be a continuous behavior – a continuous
habit pattern, a continuous lifestyle pattern.
Now wine and Spirit are both in the dative case and they are both
instrumental datives. That means that
the noun is viewed grammatically as the instrument used to accomplish the
mandate. So wine was used in the
festivals of Dionysius or Bacchus to promote a pagan spirituality. You go out and you are worshipping the god
of wine so you would go out and drink a lot of wine and get drunk. The spirit of god would enter into you and so
the means to rapport and fellowship with the god was through wine. So Paul is contrasting that methodology which
was very prevalent in the ancient world with the biblical pattern which is to
be filled by means of the Spirit. It is
not that you are getting more of the Spirit.
You got all of the Spirit you are going to get the instant you were
saved. You were indwelt by God the Holy
Spirit. You are not going to get anymore
of Him. Some people get that idea – “I
get more and more of the Spirit and the Spirit is the content of the
filling”. The Spirit is not the content
of the Spirit. The Spirit is the means
by which the content is put into the believer.
That is the idea of pleroo. It is to fill up. It is to fill up our thinking. It is to fill up our lives with the Word of
God. So we compare that with Colossians
3:16.
NKJ
Colossians
The command there is a present active imperative. To dwell in you is enoikeo. Oikeo is the verb to live. Oikos is the
word for house. The preposition en
that is in the prefix there means to live in something or to dwell within
something. So it is the same word that
is used for indwelling of the Holy Spirit. But here it is not the Holy
Spirit. It is the Word of Christ. It is the content of Scripture. We have to know the principles, the promises
of the Word of God. We have to
understand the doctrine that is there.
We have to learn to think about these things. This is why God gave us the Word. It is to force us to think about things.
Think about the book of Job. Look
at the book of Job. Job is just walking
through life one day and wham - he loses everything. He loses his children. He loses his possessions. He loses everything
that he has. He is not clued in like you
and I are in the first part of the first chapter that Satan has been up in
heaven and that God has been pointing out Job.
“Have you taken a look at Job
yet? He is the prime candidate. He is the most spiritual believer on the
planet right now. Have you really looked
at him and what a tremendous testimony he is?”
Job isn’t aware of anything that is going on. He is not privy to any special
revelation. All he knows is that he is
going through life one day just like every other day and out of the blue he
loses everything. In fact God doesn’t
start speaking to him to give him any kind of a clue until the 38th
chapter - nothing. He is silent. Why is God silent? That is one of the things that people are
often puzzled and confused about in Job.
Why is it that he goes through all of this and God doesn’t speak to
him? He is pleading with God, but there
is this long silence. God answers. Many people want God to answer right
away. We are so self absorbed that we
think that if I stub my toe God has got to tell my why immediately. He is somehow answerable to me. But you see what God wants us to do when we
go through life and we face conflicts, adversity, problems or decisions; He
wants us to wrestle with the issue.
Think about it. Pray about
it. To go to the Scriptures and find
patterns in the Scriptures that relate to
our own lives so that we can
think through what is happening in the Scriptures and pull out those principles
and apply them to our lives, not in a superficial manner but in an accurate
manner. That is why it is so important
for pastors to be training congregations to think - to think critically - to be
able to work their way through things not just to come and have a superficial
feel good time with Jesus. This is what
happens in most churches and most Christians can’t think their way out of a wet
paper sack. Most of us don’t want to
even if we can. That is just the trend
of our old sin natures. So it is the
Word of God that is so important. We
have to learn it and study it. We have
to think in terms of the Word of God.
That is how we let the Word dwell richly in us with all wisdom.
Wisdom is practical application of the Word. We always have a tendency to think of wisdom
in the Bible in terms of our own western civilization Greek philosophical
background. We think of abstract wisdom
being able to think philosophically, being able to think in terms of
logic. I am not demeaning logic, but we
think in terms of intellectual process when we think of wisdom. We think of somebody that is wise like Aristotle
or Plato or someone who is well-educated.
But that is not the biblical concept of wisdom at all. The biblical concept of wisdom is grounded in
the Old Testament concept of wisdom.
You have your wisdom books like Job, some of the Psalms, Proverbs, Song
of Solomon, and Ecclesiastes. The Old Testament concept of wisdom has the idea
of skillfulness – doing something with tremendous skill to produce something of
beauty, something that is artistic, and something that has value. It is the Hebrew word chokmah. Chokmah is translated wisdom. If you go back to some of its earliest uses
you find that in Exodus after the Jews have come out of from slavery at Mt.
Sinai and God is giving them the blueprint for the tabernacle that the Spirit
of God comes upon two craftsmen Bezalel and Aholiab and gives them chokmah so that they can
produce the articles of furniture and clothes for the priest. They can create all of these things so that
they are works of art. They are not just
things that are pragmatically valuable.
They were beautiful. They were
artistic. They had skill in working
with gold and silver, precious stones and the wood and in weaving the
fabric.
That word for skill there is the Hebrew word for wisdom. So wisdom takes you to a new level. It is being able to take the Word of God and
the principles of doctrine and then to apply them in all the areas of our lives
so that the product is that which has beauty and that which is of eternal value
that which glorifies God. So the Word of
God dwells in you richly in all wisdom.
That takes us through what we were doing last week.
I hit Ephesians
Another example I could use is a coffee cup. It is full of coffee right now because I had
some before class. That is the
content. Too many people think of the
filling of the Spirit as getting more content, more Spirit. But that grammatically would have to use a
genitive. It uses a dative. So that indicates it is talking about how the
cup gets filled with something. So we
put those two things together.
Alright now let’s back up a minute because what we see here is a mandate
back in Ephesians 5:7 that sets this up.
You might say that Ephesians 5:7-9 is like the center point or the hub
of a wheel and we are going to have three spokes come out from the wheel. The main spoke is the spoke that drives down
through Ephesians 5:7 -18 which is what we just talked about. Then the next spoke is (we are going to go
off two different directions) taking principles in Ephesians 5:7-9 and seeing
how they are played out in parallel passages in the New Testament. So we look at these verses briefly.
NKJ
Ephesians 5:7 Therefore do
not be partakers with them.
NKJ Ephesians
5:8 For you were once darkness, but now you are light
in the Lord. Walk as children of light
NKJ
Ephesians 5:9 (for the
fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness, righteousness, and truth),
Verse 8 points out two things.
You were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. That is positional. At the instant of salvation we positionally
become light. Colossians tells us that
at the instant of salvation we are transferred from the domain of darkness into
the
One of the things I have noticed as I travel internationally is that you
can be walking down the streets of
‘
I would go to
They can spot you in an instant.
You have no idea, but people spot you that way. You are a believer in Christ. That is your position. You may try to disguise yourself as somebody
who lives in the world. You can dress
like ‘em and talk like ‘em and act like ‘em and everything else; but you can’t
get away from your identity in Jesus Christ.
That is who we are.
That is what Paul is talking about here.
We are light in the Lord, but we have to learn how to walk as children
of light. Then there is a parenthetical statement
that the fruit of the Spirit is in goodness, righteousness, and truth. That is the character that is produced in the
child of light. Now where we are going
to go from here is the concept of fruitfulness.
I pointed out last time for those of you who weren’t here that there is
a textual variant in Ephesians 5:9. Some
of the older manuscripts – three of the uncials they call them -(they are 4th
century or so manuscripts) that have fruit of the light there. Light seems to make sense in the passage. One of the canons of textual criticism is
that sometimes the more difficult reading is the correct reading. But the majority of documents including one
of the older uncials also does not have light there. It reads pneuma. So I think that is the preferable
reading. It fits I think into the
context a little better. But either way we are getting to the same principle
which is character.
Now this takes us over to an important passage in Galatians. So turn over to Galatians 5. Galatians 5 is
one of the most significant passages in all of the New Testament for
understanding the spiritual life. We are
going to jump into the middle of it and then back out because I think we have
to understand what Paul is writing about to the Galatians if we are really
going to comprehend the significance of what he says in Galatians 5:16. So we will just start at verse 14 to pick up
the context.
NKJ
Galatians
This is a quote from one of the commandments in the Old Testament,
Leviticus 19:18. Jesus repeats this in
Matthew 7:12,
NKJ
Matthew
NKJ
Matthew
NKJ
Matthew
Now I pointed out a couple of weeks ago when we were in the Upper Room
Discourse in John 15 that John 15 where he begins the vine analogy ends with
the repetition of the governing command related to the whole discourse there
which is to love one another. The
mandate that Jesus gave in John13:34-5 for Church Age believers is “to love one
another as I have loved you and by this that is by the love for one another all
will know that you are my disciples.”
Now Jesus upped the ante there. In the Old Testament the mandate was to
love your neighbor as yourself. Your neighbor may be a believer or an
unbeliever. The standard was like you
love yourself.
As Paul says to illustrate the importance of men loving their wives he
said, “But no man hated his own flesh, but everyone loves it and cherishes
it.”
That is a universal principle.
Everyone loves himself despite the fact that modern psychology says
about people having a low self image and they hate themselves. Well, they are wrong. The Bible says that every person is born with
an overdose of self love. Self is number
one. We are all self absorbed and we
have to learn to transfer that to other people.
So that becomes a standard under the Mosaic Law because that is the best
you can do without the Holy Spirit. The
reason Paul quotes that here is because – what is the issue in
NKJ
Galatians
NKJ
Galatians
See there is a problem in the church at Galatia. That is interpersonal conflicts that are
going on. They are not loving one
another. He is pointing out the fact
that you failed to fulfill the Mosaic Law commandment that you are saying it is
the key to spirituality. Now he is going
to tell them how to get there. That is
in the next verse.
NKJ
Galatians 5:16 I say then:
Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh.
The implication is a contrast.
The lust of the flesh is what is happening in verse 15. You bite and devour one another. Beware lest you be consumed by one another.
Just so you see where Paul is driving here when he said, “Walk by means
of the Spirit.” He then has to develop
out the contrast between the flesh and the Spirit in verses 17 – 18. Then 19-21 it gives you the manifestation of
the characteristics of sin nature controlled people. Then in verse 22-23 he gives the
manifestation of the production of people who are walking by means of the
Spirit. What is the first thing he says? The fruit of the Spirit is love. What is he talking about in this
context? He is talking about love. They are not fulfilling a Mosaic Law mandate
to love one another- to love your neighbor as yourself. They are not fulfilling that.
What he is pointing out is that you can’t fulfill God’s requirements on
your own. You can produce spirituality
by morality, Remember the sin nature is all an unbeliever has. It is hard for us to remember that. Sometimes I get really aggravated at the
world around me and then I have to remember.
“Well, why am I mad that the world is acting like the world? Why am I mad that these pagan unbelievers are
acting like pagan unbelievers? They can
only operate according to the one nature that they have and that’s the sin
nature.”
That sin nature is a source of everything that comes out of their
lives. That produces morality and that
produces immorality. There are some
cultures in the world that are incredibly moral. There are some religious systems that have a
very strict moral code. All of that
comes out of the sin nature. We forget
that the sin nature produces a lot of morality and religion as well as
immorality and disillusion. But what we
have here is Paul emphasizing that their morality hasn’t cut it yet. Even though they are saying that you have
to obey the law in order to grow as a believer, the end result is that they are
eating each other up. Paul can spot this
pretty well because in Romans 7 he describes how he was trying to live the
Christian life on the basis of the law.
When he finally dealt with the 10th commandment, he realized
he hadn’t gotten anywhere on his own efforts.
The flesh just can’t produce spirituality. You can’t have a
pull-yourself-up-by-your-own-bootstraps approach to the spiritual life. It is a supernatural way of life that can
only be produced supernaturally. God the
Holy Spirit is the one who has to do it.
You can’t do it on your own.
You can’t just get up in the morning and say, “Here I am going to do
these 10 things today and that is gong to make me a better Christian.”
But on the other had you don’t just say, “Well I am going to confess my
sins and I am in fellowship and it is just going to happen.”
There is that balance between the Holy Spirit. You have to be in right relationship to the
Holy Spirit. Our responsibility is that
we have to be applying doctrine and then the Holy Spirit uses that to produce
spiritual growth in our life.
Now to understand this passage in 5:16 we have to understand the
vocabulary here. We go through Galatians
1 and 2 (that is the first part of the book) and 3 and 4 and now we are in
5. Galatians 5:16 is picking up a
thought that he left in Galatians 3:3.
Galatians 3:3 – 5:16 is a rabbit trail.
But it is a rabbit trail to set them up so that they can understand and
appreciate Galatians 5:16. Now let’s look at the vocabulary here real quick
before we go back to Galatians 3:2.
The verb there is a present active imperative of peripateo
and it emphasizes to walk step-by-step, to go forward step-by-step. We are to walk. The Spirit is in the instrumental dative
indicating that we walk by means of the Spirit.
Then he says that you shall not fulfill the lusts of the flesh. It uses a double negative. In English a double negative means that they
cancel each other and you end up with a positive. But in Greek if you want to state that
something is impossible, you do it grammatically. You use a double negative – both the ou and me.
Both of those are words for no or not.
You use a subjunctive mood verb.
So he says, “You shall not fulfill the lusts of the flesh.”
That basically means when you are walking by the Spirit you can’t
sin. It won’t happen. You just can’t do it.
So you say, “Well wait a minute.
How do I sin then?”
Because, you stop walking by the Spirit.
Then you have sinned. It
naturally falls out. It is like water
flowing downhill. Walking by the Spirit
demands a conscious moment-by-moment dependence on the Spirit. It is like Peter walking on the water. When his eyes are on the Lord he does just
great. As soon as he took his eyes off
the Lord he sunk. That is a great
illustration for this. As long as we are
consciously dependent on the Holy Spirit we can’t sin. But as soon as we take our eyes off of Him,
we sink right into the cesspool of the sin nature. It is automatic. Taking your eyes off the Spirit isn’t
sin. It’s sinking. Then we fulfill the lusts of the flesh.
Now we go back to Galatians 3:2.
This is where you tie a whole book together. I just love doing this kind of stuff because
most of us are so used to pinpoint exegesis and microscopic analysis on each
leaf in the forest that we don’t know what the forest looks like any more. Some times you have to stand back and take
that big picture. In Galatians 1 and 2
Paul deals with the problem of legalism and the gospel. He has that famous statement in Galatians
1:5-7
NKJ Galatians
1:5 to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen. 6
I marvel that you are turning away so soon from Him who called you in the grace
of Christ, to a different gospel, 7 which is not another; but there
are some who trouble you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ
If you add anything to grace (grace and law, grace and works) you
nullify grace and there is no gospel.
There is no salvation. He ends up
bringing his point home. He goes
straight to Galatians 2:16 saying….
NKJ
Galatians 2:16
"knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law but by faith
in Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Christ Jesus, that we might be
justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law; for by the works
of the law no flesh shall be justified.
Notice the vocabulary there - not by the works of the law, but by faith
in Christ.
One and two deal with the problem of legalism at salvation. But chapters 3 through 5 deal with legalism
in the spiritual life – legalism in progressive sanctification if you
will.
So he starts off in Galatians 3:2 and he says, “Okay, now I want you to
answer a question.
NKJ
Galatians 3:2 This only I
want to learn from you: Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or
by the hearing of faith?
Which was it? What we expect in
the answer is for them to say the hearing of faith. He just got through developing this in
chapter 1 and chapter 2.
He says, “Do you receive the Spirit by works of the law?”
The law here refers to the Mosaic Law and the teaching of the Judaizers
that if you really want to have the full blessings of the spiritual life, you
have to enter into the blessings of the Mosaic Covenant by virtue of circumcision. Remember circumcision is the sign of the
Abrahamic Covenant. So if you are really
going to benefit from the blessings of the Abrahamic Covenant, then you have to
get circumcised. Then you have to do all
of the other rituals related to the Mosaic Law. We see this contrast between
the law and faith and works and the Spirit so that throughout the book. We are going to see this contrast between law
vs. grace, works vs. faith, slavery vs. freedom and flesh vs. the Spirit.
These are the contrasts. The left
column indicates how you try to live your life under religion - law, works, you
are enslaved to the flesh. The other
side is by grace through faith we have freedom in the Spirit. It all connects - freedom to grow and freedom
to fail.
Galatians 3:3 drives the point home.
NKJ
Galatians 3:3 Are you so
foolish? Having begun in the Spirit, are you now being made perfect by the
flesh?
There is that instrumental dative again. There are about 6 of these
instrumental datives –datives with the Spirit in the book of Galatians. Every time it has this emphasis on
instrumentality. Here is how you see
it.
It says, “Having begun by means of the Spirit.”
How did you begin the Christian life?
Regeneration. Who produced
regeneration? The Spirit. So the means of regeneration is the Holy
Spirit.
NKJ
Titus 3:5 not by works
of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us,
through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit,
Hear that word “by”. That is instrumentality.
So Paul says in Galatians 3:3…
NKJ
Galatians 3:3 Are you so
foolish? Having begun in the Spirit, are you now being made perfect by the
flesh?
That is how he got regenerated – by faith alone.
The word there for perfect is the word epiteleo which means to
perform or establish, to finish or to bring something to completion. That is a form of the same word that we have
in Galatians 5:16 where we read…
NKJ
Galatians 5:16 I say then:
Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh.
That is teleo. This is an intensified form of the verb epiteleo. So
it is the same thing. What do we have
here? Spirit, epiteleo
(being made perfect or fulfilling) and flesh.
Those are the three key words you have over in Galatians 5:16. Of the four key words you have in Galatians
5:16, three of them come out of Galatians 3:3.
He doesn’t explain how to continue in the Spirit until you get to
Galatians 5:16. He raises the question
here in this rhetorical question to bring home the point that they got saved by
the Spirit. They are no longer trying to
live by the Spirit. They are trying to
do it all on their own. So then he has
to go off and go through all the intricate doctrinal development so they can
understand why you have to walk by means of the Spirit. That is how the book of Galatians
develops.
So he comes to the end and he says, “If you want to fulfill the
Christian life then you have to walk by means of the Spirit...”
The in verses 17-18 he talks about the warfare that takes place - the
flesh lusts against the Spirit and the Spirit against the flesh. There are two things here that are
conflicting. Sometimes if you are a
Christian you think that you have a multiple personality syndrome. On the one hand you have this sin nature that
when you let it go, it really rips.
You think, “Who is that person? I
thought I had dealt with this.”
It can really surprise you sometimes.
If your husband or wife is around, it can really shock them too. We just don’t want to let that go. There is this warfare. On the other hand there is this new person
that is being matured and developed by God the Holy Spirit as we walk by the
Holy Spirit. There is this internal
struggle. This is the essence of
spiritual warfare. Spiritual warfare
isn’t going out and fighting the demons and casting out demons which is how
most people want to understand it today.
It is the warfare that goes on between your ears. The center point of that is your volition. Are you going to chose to apply doctrine and
walk by means of the Spirit or are you going to try to live life on your
own. That is the conflict. They war against one another.
Then in verse 18 we have our second key phrase.
NKJ
Galatians 5:18 But if you
are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.
To be led by something, what do you have to do? You have to follow it. Leading presupposes a follower. To follow something you have to have a clear
objective path out in front of you. The clear
objective path that is placed in front of us is the Word of God. The Holy Spirit leads us by the Word of
God. If we are led by the Spirit, we are
not under what? The law.
That is the problem in Galatia.
They are trying to do it by the law; but the law produces bickering,
devouring one another, infighting, schisms and division. Everybody is trying to stake out their own
territory by doing their own thing. But
if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the Law and the Spirit can
conquer that.
Now how do we tell how we are walking by the flesh? Some times people don’t do what they
say. They talk about how much they love
you and how important doctrine is, but you look at their life and that tells
you what dominates. If the works of the flesh
are present - adultery, fornication, lewdness (these all have to do with sexual
sins), idolatry (which has to do with worshipping anything other than the
Lord). We don’t go out and have primitive idols of stone today. We have sophisticated idols of the mind. In Colossians 2 Paul talks about greed or
materialism which is idolatry. You think
that things and money are going to give you what only God can give you. That is
idolatry. Sorcery is the Greek word pharmakeia.
This has to do with hallucinogenic drugs in order to solve the problems
in life rather than being dependent upon God. Hatred is a mental attitude sin
that produces overt sins of contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath,
selfish ambitions, dissentions, heresies, envy, murder, drunkenness revelries
and the like. All of these are
characteristic of somebody walking in the sin nature. Those who practice such things on an ongoing
continuous basis will not inherit the kingdom of God. That doesn’t mean they won’t be saved. It means they won’t have an inheritance in
heaven. That is the message of Hebrews –
you have to stick with it or you will lose your inheritance but not your
salvation.
NKJ
Galatians 5:22 But the
fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness,
faithfulness,
NKJ
Galatians 5:23 gentleness,
self-control. Against such there is no law.
Now one last thing before we finish.
What we see here is one of the most important principles that you find
in all of the New Testament. Too many
people today overlook this. That is that
you are doing one of two things. You are
either walking by the flesh or you are walking by the Spirit - one or the
other. There is no little bit of
this. If you have mixed motives, you
are walking by the flesh.
I remember a seminary professor saying, “I do a lot of things. Part of it is to glorify God and part of it
is selfish motives there.”
Then it is all garbage. It is
either one or the other. That is clear
from the grammar. If you are walking by the Spirit, it is impossible to walk by
the flesh. These are mutually
exclusive. It is either one or it’s the
other. It’s not both. It isn’t a little bit of one and a little bit
of the other. You are either in
fellowship or out of fellowship. We have
people walking around today. There are
some guys on the radio that say that these aren’t absolutes. That falls against the grammar. We see the
same kind of thing when we went through Ephesians 5. You are either foolish or you are wise. You
are either walking in the light or you are walking in darkness. You are either walking by the Holy Spirit or
you are not. You are either redeeming
the time or you are not redeeming the time.
You are either walking by the Spirit or you not being led by the
Spirit. They are mutually
exclusive.
So we have to understand how we walk by the Spirit once we are walking
by the flesh. That is where I John 1:9
comes in. Whenever we get out of
fellowship, whenever we start walking by the sin nature, the way to recover is
through confession of sin. The key there
is cleansing. Confession of sin
cleanses. You see cleansing all the way
through the Bible from the Old Testament to the future millennial temple. If you are going to come into the presence of
God, there has to be cleansing. In the
Old Testament under the Mosaic Law and in the Millennial Kingdom in the future
there are sacrifices for cleansing. In
the millennial temple you are going to have a fallen priesthood operating. They have to be ceremonially clean before
they can go into the temple. In the
Church Age we have confession. John
calls it confession in I John 1:9. Paul
calls it self examination.
NKJ 1
Corinthians 11:28 But let a man examine himself, and
so let him eat of the bread and drink of the cup.
James 4 says,
NKJ James 4:8
Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you
sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded.
It is all the same principle of cleansing. It is important because it restores us to a
position where growth can take place and we can go forward. So we will come back and in the next lesson
we are going to cover that.